


i know who i want to take me home

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Beaches, Blow Jobs, Car Sex, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Future Fic, POV Phil Coulson, Skye and her Huge Crush on Coulson, Summer, Surfing, Vacation, coulson feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-09
Updated: 2014-09-09
Packaged: 2018-02-15 15:56:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2234835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coulson can't remember the last time he was able to take a break like this.</p><p>(Written for the first ever Coulson's Cakewalk)</p>
            </blockquote>





	i know who i want to take me home

**one**

He picked a good spot.

Not touristy.

Tiny village, but lots of amenities. Renting the bungalow was cheap. Every day he wakes up to the sound of young men and women making their way to the water on the spot of beach before him. There's a bit of a hedge and a drop, so Coulson is not exactly exposed to strangers but he can hear them in the morning, talking, animated at the beginning of the day. A crowd local surf enthusiasts. He hadn't been looking for it – it's been a while – but by the third day he was searching for a place in town where he could buy a board and a wetsuit.

His car is a rental because he wouldn't feel okay bringing Lola along, he wants to avoid questions. It's still red, but spacious and discrete.

He didn't really plan this in detail.

He hadn't wanted to come here, in the first place.

He has to admit when Skye and May had first come up with the idea of giving everybody a summer vacation ("plus _you_ totally need it" Skye had said and May had nodded furiously) he had been against it. Even if it was around the time when they had captured the last escaped convict from the Fridge (it had cost them more than two months to deal with the consequences of Garrrett's and Ward's little adventure) and everybody agreed that other agencies could take care of threats while they enjoyed a well-earned rest.

Come on, it's just two weeks, he tells himself. You can survive two weeks.

The first day he is sticking to the plan that this whole thing is silly and unecessary. He intends to grumpily stay here in this vacation house but do his job. He brought his files, he intends to waste no time. It's two weeks, he tells himself – the world could go to hell in two weeks (it can go to hell in two hours, it normally does). They are wrong. Skye and May are wrong. He's fine. He doesn't need rest.

The first day he cleans the house – before realizing the combination of wind and sand will probably drive him insane if he takes it too seriously. The house is kind of a mess, with its cheap furniture and incompetent window fittings. The view and the relative isolation make it seem like a better place than it really is. He's glad he brought towels and bedsheets.

The first day he sleeps thirteen hours straight, wakes up by sunrise, notices the cheerful quiet of waves and wind and starts getting Skye's and May's point.

The second day he buys some food, some beer and takes a walk on the beach.

May phones him on the third morning to make sure he hasn't run away and is secretly running ops in some other organization.

Then he starts settling into some sort of routine.

Then he starts surfing.

It relaxes him, because it has been so long since he's tried it that he can just take his time re-learning the basics. He's good at it but not great, which is comforting in itself. He spends a long time just sitting on the board, rocked by the waves, wondering if the world is going to be okay without him in it.

 

**two**

It's peaceful here, and peaceful is good.

Not peaceful in a detached sense – he gets to see people, he talks to the grocery store's owner and her son every day, he crosses paths with the unruly local teenagers every day, he exchanges tips with other surfers. They sometimes invite him to a drink but Coulson always refuses politely.

He goes back to the house and cooks and reads all afternoon.

It's utterly useless, he knows, as an existence, but at some point he has to concede that Skye and May are probably genuises.

 

**three**

Time passes so slowly here that it actually passes quite fast for Coulson.

On the ninth day there's a knock on his door.

 

**four**

"May sent me to check up on you," Skye says almost as soon as he opens.

She's standing there, in his porch, looking strangely out of place in these surroundings. She looks different. She wearing jeans and a loose shirt and Coulson thinks, vaguely, that a couple of weeks is a very short time to imagine you have missed someone. He feels she's also seizing him up. It's probable Skye finds it weird to see her boss in shorts and a thin sweater for the afternoon breeze, and barefoot on the wooden floor.

"You've cut your hair," he comments.

She brushes a lock off her forehead, self-conscious. "It will be easier for training. And actual missions."

"Come on in."

 

**five**

"Surf?" she says, as they are finishing coffee on the porch. "That's surprising. And cool."

"Then it shouldn't be so surprising."

She laugh-snorts. "I guess not."

"What have you been up to?" he asks in kind.

Skye becomes animated. It's been less than ten days since he saw that face and yet – he realizes it's been a lot longer than ten days. It's been a while. Skye used to pull that face a lot when he met her. He worries it's his fault she doesn't these days.

"I went to this convention in Pittsburgh," she starts.

"Was this a _hacking convention_?" he interrupts.

She tilts her head in disappointment. "Don't worry. I didn't _participate_ or anything. I was just checking out the new blood. Who knows? Maybe even scout for some new SHIELD material."

"A hacker? You want to recruit a hacker?"

"Don't speak like that didn't turn out awesome for you."

Coulson is about to protest but Skye is right. There are many days when he regrets having hired her in the first place, but it's never because she didn't deliver as a agent.

"But," she says, "we can talk business when we get back. This is your vacation."

"It's your vacation, too."

She presses her lips together. "Well, it's not the same."

At least she admits this whole vacation idea was a trap set just for him. He is not going to mention how she also pretty much has been talking about recruiting work she has been conducting while supposedly on holiday. Coulson wonders if the rest of his team are actually out there doing little jobs and he's the only one lazing around. It's okay, he has come to terms with the reality that he needed a break.

She finishes telling him all about Pittsburgh while the sun sets. Evenings are quite breezy here and suddenly it starts getting cold. Skye looks at the hour, realizing they have been at it for some time now. She stands up.

"Okay, I've checked up on you. You are not drowning in misery and begging for a mission like we all imagined. In fact you're doing pretty well. So I guess I'll leave you to it..."

There's a hesitation in her voice Coulson is not sure he wants to decypher. But it has been a nice afternoon. And it's enough to make him wish it could go on. The truth is he doesn't want her to go.

"Or you could stay." Skye arches a teasing eyebrow at him. "There's a guest room. You could come surfing tomorrow."

"Really?" she asks, excited at the prospect, obviously, but careful in case Coulson is just being polite. She sits again, to look at him in the eye. He nods. "I've never gone surfing. Never done much of the beach scene, really."

"Settled then."

"But –"

"What?"

"This is supposed to be your vacation. You don't need me to get in the way."

He looks at her. She's sitting in the straw chair, cross-legged despite how small it is. He thinks about her obsession with not being in the way, with not bothering anyone. He understands it, given her past, but it saddens him a bit.

"You won't be in the way," he reassures her, and walks into the house to start preparing the guest room.

 

**six**

He fixes them a quick breakfast – it's not like the produce of the area is particularly good but he does what he can and Skye seems to enjoy the griddled slices of tomato on toast – and they drive into town to shop for supplies.

Skye rents a wetsuit rather than buy it and she spends the least amount of time known to humanity getting some bikini too.

"Not sure I'm ready for that, though," she says, quietly, back in the car, as Coulson tries to make his way through the unpaved paths towards the good spot of beach, eight miles away.

"What?" he'd been concentrated on the road and is not sure what she's referring to.

"Well, you know, bikinis. Because of the whole... You know..." she trails off but Coulson catches sight of her hands clasping over her stomach. He hadn't thought Skye would worry about such things, but maybe he should have.

"I know what you mean," he tells her casually. "When I go swimming I try to find a deserted cove, with no one near. I'm glad for the wetsuit, I don't have to worry about people around me."

Skye's head shoots up, eyes wide like she could never expect that confession from him. Well, it's not something he was planning on telling anyone, but if it helps her maybe it's not so bad. He felt the same, just a moment ago, when Skye told him. At least he wasn't the only one having trouble adjusting to the idea.

"Thanks," she says.

He smiles at her through the rear-view mirror.

 

**seven**

By the time they arrive on the beach clouds have gathered overhead. It doesn't look good.

"No surfing today," one of the locals, Diego, tells him.

"No surfing today," Coulson repeats, staring at the vaguely menacing sea, the black clouds reflecting on its surface and glittering knives where the waves come to break.

"Are those your surf friends?" Skye asks him, pointing at the group of youths. Coulson nods. "Wow. Aren't you popular?"

He smiles and wiggles his eyebrows.

The path from where they have to leave the car and Coulson's bungalow is a bit length and by the time they are crossing the lawn it has already started to rain an ugly summer storm, pouring and leaving them drenched in a moment.

The day has got incredibly dark and it's not noon yet. Coulson has to turn on the lights. He and Skye look at each other for a moment by the doorframe, looking at their wet hair and their wet clothes. Coulson doesn't know what it means but the moment goes on and they linger. He breaks it, because he will always be the first to break it.

"We'll catch a cold," he says, turning his back to Skye.

Ten minutes later they're back into dry clothes, Skye wearing the cut-offs and tourist-y t-shirt she bought in town this morning.

"Here," he offers her a towel.

"Fun day," she teases, drying her hair.

She's sitting on the ugly-looking beige couch by the entrance. Coulson likes the way she holds each lock between her fingers.

"We'll try again tomorrow," he says.

"Tomorrow? Can I stay another day?"

He draws a deep breath. "You can stay as long as you want."

Skye frowns slightly at that, like she needs an explanation. He doesn't have one. He reaches out to touch strands of damp hair stuck to her temple, then letting his fingers drop, brushing her cheek.

"Coulson?"

It all happens quite quickly, and it feels like everything happens at the same time. One moment he is pushing his fingers into Skye's hair, then the next their mouths are smashed together and he doesn't know who was kissing whom first, and Skye's arms are around his waist but then they slip under his t-shirt, touching the skin of his back, but then her fingers twist into a fist in the fabric of his clothes, pulling him towards her, pulling him to climb onto the couch with her. She still tastes of rain a bit, some drops running down her nose, since he interrupted her drying her hair. She tastes a bit salty like the winds does in seaside places like this.

The couch is ridiculous small, and it's ridiculously complicated and awkward to organize their limbs on it but they don't care. They haven't stopped kissing for a moment by the time Coulson starts unbuttoning Skye's shorts and she's tugging at his t-shirt and pulling it over his head. He pauses for a moment while her eyes dart over his scar and he almost winces but the only things he can see in Skye's gaze are lust and understanding. So when she manages to kick her pants to the floor (and it's not an easy maneuver) Coulson bends over and kisses her stomach, to let her know it's okay.

But the moment of calm doesn't last long and everything goes back to happening too fast, too at the same time. Skye's fingers in his hair, pulling him up for an open-mouthed kiss, Skye's fingers pushing down his shorts and boxers at once, Skye's fingers around his cock, Skye's fingers getting rid of her own underwear. Coulson kisses her jaw, trailing with tongue and teeth along the line of her neck. Skye moves her legs, trying to wrap them around his waist.

Then he pulls away, remembering something.

"No, no," she whines. "Don't stop."

"Uh. Condoms?" he asks, looking over Skye's head to the living room.

Skye points at herself. "SHIELD agent," she reminds him, like he's very stupid.

He gets it and stops being stupid and starts kissing her neck again. He grabs the back of the couch for support when he pushes into her and – everything happens at the same time and he is beginning to like it – Skye presses her hand to his chest when he does, holding her breath, gently drawing her fingers across his heart. He knows what she means.

 

**eight**

"So this is what you're up to during your vacations, uh?" Skye asks him.

They're on the bed and he is beginning to get hungry. With the, er, _everything_ , they skipped lunch and he gets this sudden and possibly ridiculous urge to cook a meal for Skye. She starts picking at the bedsheets, her face a distinctive post-orgasm flush. Coulson can still smell rain on her.

"Be serious," he says, but smiling a bit. He knows she is testing the waters, prodding him to get his thoughts on what they just did. He knows she is serious – seriously considering the possibility that he might be just fooling around. She should know better but he also recognizes why she doesn't.

Then her teasing face softens and she slides across the bed to him. She gives him a quick kiss where his shoulder meets his arm.

"I have a confession to make," she says, meaning it's not a good confession. Coulson frowns. "Don't be angry, okay? It's not that big. May didn't send me to check up on you. I made that up."

He fights the urge to chuckle at her. He ducks his head for a moment, trying to steady the rush of affection for her which has just overcome him, and then looks up.

"I have a confession of my own," he tells her, pausing for effect. "I knew. I talked to May. She didn't mention anything about you coming to see me."

Skye sits up on the bed. She seems kind of appalled.

"So you let me lie."

"Well, I hope that's the last time you lie to me."

She shrugs.

"It was kind of a white lie. To save myself the embarrassment of admitting to your face that I'd missed you." He knows he makes _a face_. "What? Right. You're embarrassed now. A bit too late because, may I remind you, that blusing face of yours was right between my legs not twenty minutes ago."

"Really? I think I need to refresh my memory," he says, leaning over and pressing his mouth to the top of her thigh.

 

**nine**

He likes it here.

Not as a permanent thing, he would probably go insane in a life outside the work he does in SHIELD. But it's nice with the morning noise of people going to the beach, and with the quiet cold of seven o'clock, summer in a drafty house. He likes knowing there are people out there living valuable lives outside what he knows. He knows so little. He joined SHIELD at eighteen and he pretends knowing how to order wine at a fancy restaurant is life experience but it's not.

He likes it here.

In this bed made with cheap materials in a house which exists only for summer rentals. And summer is ending. In this bed with the sheets he bought before the trip only as an afterthought. In this bed with Skye under the covers, sleeping with her back to Coulson but her foot touching his ankle. Breathing evenly and snoring lightly while Coulson's hand over her stomach raises and falls with the air on her lungs.

He likes it here like this – and _this_ he might want as a permanent thing.

 

**ten**

The day starts with a blinding sun in the sky.

Coulson is kissing her neck as Skye looks at the ocean, hand shielding her eyes.

"Surf?" she asks.

He's actually quite excited about that. He flattens his hands against her hips, turning her so they're face to face.

"Surf," he repeats. Then he presses his body against her. "In a bit."

 

**eleven**

Skye does not like surfing.

She tries far too hard far too soon. She gets a frustrated soon. 

He tries not to smile when the waves pushes her off the board and under the water.

He picked a deserted beach for them. Not the greatest waves or the nicest view but quiet and apart. Skye approached the whole situation with the careful alarm of a city person ("prairies, I did prairies," she argued when Coulson pointed it out, "and sometimes Nebraska, but not the beach") and he can relate to that, being quite the city person himself.

"Where did _you_ learn, Director Outdoors?" she asks, once she's fed up and they sit on the sand to talk. There's a light breeze and Skye has borrowed his sweater. He likes seeing her in it.

He rubs his fingers along that spot on his neck which stings a bit, the sun and the sea salt making him itchy. He pauses before he tells her.

"SHIELD set up a headquarters in California about fifteen years ago, and they picked me to be on the team," he says, suddenly strangely happy to be sharing this with Skye. "I didn't last long there but enough to pick up some tricks."

"Mm uh." She is seizing him up from under the sunglasses. _His_ sunglasses. He likes that, too.

 

**twelve**

Back in the car and after they've shaken most of the sand off Skye says "Come here", growly and hungry and that's all it takes, he's kissing her, more than kissing her, pressing her against the back seat, letting her know how hard he is already, rocking against her as he groans into her mouth, his hands on her hips and hers scratching his scalp.

She pulls the sweater over her head in a moment and Coulson finds himself undoing the laces on her back and taking the bikini top off, moving his hands to her breasts as Skye slips her hand under the waistband of his trunks. She never breaks eye contact, looking at him with such an open and Skye-like expression Coulson thinks he might be done already. He holds his breath. He's not. He reaches and kisses her hard.

For a while – or a moment – everything is the taste of salt and there's sunlight under his eyelids (because he can't look at her face right now) and then Skye pulls away, hands clasped on his shoulders, disentangling herself from his embrace to sit on her knees. She takes him in her hand again while she bends over, her wet hair spilling against his stomach.

Fuck, Coulson thinks, when her lips brush the head of his cock. "Fuck," he says, when she kisses it teasingly once, twice. He threads his fingers into her hair, with difficulty, a mess because of the sea water, as Skye slides her mouth over him.

She goes slow and careful and perfect and he can't help jerking his hips against the sensation, muttering her name over and over while his hand drops from her hair to her back, fingers skimming up and down.

"S-skye," he moans.

She looks up, holding Coulson's gaze as she licks the underside of his cock and he is not going to last much longer.

"Oh, god," he groans, "god, Skye, come here."

She does, letting him grab her elbows as she climbs to straddle his lap.

She doesn't even bother to take off the rest of her bikini, she just pushes it aside and she sinks into him. Coulson bucks against her immediately and pathetically.

She closes her mouth against the reddish spot on his neck that still itches and sucks at it. 

 

**thirteen**

He realizes there haven't been many summer vacations in his life.

Not since he joined SHIELD, anyway.

From the first moment he thought if he put more hours than anyone – he wasn't the most gifted recruit in ops, and he was smart but he had no education and he wasn't a brilliant scientist – he would prove his loyalty better than most.

Summer wasn't anything special.

Going away for a while was never an option. (he remembers making plans with Audrey, yes, but even then a part of him knew that something would come up and take him away; well, he wasn't wrong, was he)

Maybe this is what it means, to have _new_ SHIELD. Maybe he doesn't have to live that life anymore.

And maybe it's better if he doesn't think about these things while he's in a strange town, leisurely strolling down the man street in casual clothes and a slight sunburn, a bag of groceries in one hand and Skye's hand in the other. This is no position to be making any judgements on his own past.

 

**fourteen**

There was one holiday though.

It was before his father died, and on one of the rare occassions when he was _actually there_.

They went to some friends' bed and breakfast on the East Coast, Coulson doesn't remember exactly where (lack of use has dimmed a lot of the memories from that time) but he remembers it was the beach. Except it rained the whole time and everybody was miserable. He spent the whole time playing card games with his mother.

He's remembering that now, or dreaming about it, because he's not sure when he wakes up, warmth on his cheek and something cool on his forehead.

He wakes up to Skye's fingers gently caressing the lines of his brow.

"You shouldn't fall asleep on the beach," she tells him when his eyes manage to focus. "You'll get sunburn. Even I know that."

He looks up at her, a bit shaken.

"What's wrong?" she asks.

"Nothing."

She kneels besides him on the dry, warm sand.

"No," she says, wrapping her hand around the back of his neck. "Not nothing. You look sad."

He smiles at her. He knows this woman will never let him get away with his bullshit.

"Bad dream," he says and only the first half is a lie.

"Wanna tell me?"

Coulson touches his fingertips to her wrist, not to pull her away, but to plead that she keeps touching him, that she keeps caressing his nape and playing with his hair.

He nods. "Yeah. I want to tell you."

 

 

**fifteen**

A day later they are sitting on the porch, drinking a couple of beers as the night closes in on their little universe. Skye's legs are drapped across his lap while he runs her fingers along her shin in a lazy and distracted fashion.

"So your vacation ends tomorrow."

"Yeah."

"Veredict? Did you have fun?" she asks.

He doesn't mean to make her suffer, or make her wait, it's just that he doesn't know how to put it into words. They have always been very good at communicating, Skye and him, it's a bit frustrating that they are not right now.

"You could say that," he replies, looking out to the sea, the little slivers of blue and moonlight appearing from time to time in his view, against the blurred lines of water and sky. Okay, he can try. "Specially the last part of it."

Skye takes her legs off him, sitting up and closer. She is arching an eyebrow and staring very intently at him.

"I see. Uh. Would you say you'd care to repeat it?"

"The vacation?" He can't imagine the world in which he has chosen to live and work would afford many opportunities for that.

She shrugs. "Or, specifically, repeat the last part of it?"

He knows how much it must have taken for her to just ask. So. "Yes, I would like that."

She presses her legs to her chest, resting her arms on her knees. She's still looking at him like she tries to find an answer to a very complicated question. It's not that complicated. Or it shouldn't be. Except, she's Agent Skye and he's the Director of SHIELD and no amount of seawater and beach and fooling around in the back of a rental car will stop the sun from rising tomorrow and them from having to go back to being just that. Coulson hopes they don't have to be _just_ that.

"But I don't need a vacation for that," he says. "Hopefully."

She looks impressed, if nothing else. "You mean that?"

"Yes."

"Wow."

He smiles, taking Skye's feet in his hand and pulling her over until she's back in her original position, her legs comfortably resting on his lap.

As always Skye is pretty accurate when assessing a situation.

 _Wow_.

 

**sixteen**

"Why?" Skye asks him later. A lot later, a whole universe of later, when they are back in the base and he's back in his normal life and he's back to being Director of SHIELD.

He doesn't pretend he ignores what the question means.

Though it's more a matter of _when_ than _why_.

"You knocked at my door," he says simply. "It had been a little over a week since I'd last seen you. But when I opened the door I realized what was going on with me."

Skye widens her eyes, needs no other, more precise explanation. "Oh my god you had missed me. Admit it. You were missing me."

"I..."

"That is so embarrassing for you."

It is, and it isn't. In any case he ducks his head and buries his face in the hollow of Skye's neck. She laughs and he feels it _everywhere_. He knows they only have ten more minutes before the alarm goes off and they have to get ready for today's morning meeting with the team, before SHIELD intrudes and dictates his life once more, even if this time it is only for a while, because then he gets to come back to _this_.

Still, some mornings he wishes for something more than ten more minutes. And she doesn't say but he knows Skye wishes that too.

He can't wait for their next vacation.


End file.
